Decision
by Queen of the Faeries
Summary: Just some thoughts during Lunatic Pandora


Decision

Lunatic Pandora was flat and gray and dull.

There was nothing gaudy or decorative about it. It was directly to the point, without anything to distract or annoy. Silently, Fujin decided she liked this place.

Now, she sat carefully in a chair in the soldier's quarters, listening to the people in front of her talking. Voices meant nothing to her.

Fujin was not a talkative person.

She had always been the type to keep her feelings inside her, never showing them, acting cold and aloof. She never bothered with anyone else, except for her only two friends, her posse.

They had always been everything to her. Even though she never admitted it, she was sure that both of them knew. She had been with them for several years now, and aside from her posse, she didn't care about anything else.

And now the posse was falling apart.

Slowly, she shifted, so that she could look at her friend with her good eye.

Raijin was a tall and muscular bulk, broad-shouldered and dark-skinned. Always talking with his abundance of words, he seemed like a sharp contrast to Fujin. And yet the two were friends. She knew that she would never abandon either him or her other friend. 

The one that was missing.

He had been missing for quite some time now, maybe several months. She didn't know how long exactly; she had forgotten how to count days in her misery. And although she had rejoined him, he was still missing. His body was in his assigned room, training, but his mind was not. The man that she served now was not the man that she had known.

Her posse only had three members: herself, Raijin, and Seifer.

It had been a long time since she joined them, six years at least. And she never forgot that day when she met Seifer.

She had accidentally stumbled into a battle with a T-rexaur that afternoon, in the forest near the immense Garden. Fujin was by no means a weak fighter; she knew how to defend herself and attacked anyone that provoked her.

But T-rexaurs were tough opponents, and she knew that she would need help. The sun had been bright and high in the sky at that time, hanging there as if watching her avoid the dinosaur's lunging jaws and lashing tail, laughing at her.

She had been cornered, with nowhere to go. Her only defense was to fight. So she had raised her weapon, dodging between the teeth to slash at it with her blue-tinged weapon. 

She wasn't sure how long the battle lasted. But despite all her training that she had endured, she was tiring. And too slow, the tail whipped out. Reflexively, Fujin twisted her head to one side—

--And felt a searing pain in the place where her left eye should have been.

Unable to fight back the involuntary cry of pain, Fujin dropped to her knees, defeated, waiting for the inevitable. 

And all so suddenly, _he_ was there. Tall, built like a god, with golden hair and absolutely no flaws. She remembered how she had dropped all her mental barriers and defenses and stood there in the midst of the battle, staring at him like some sort of dazed schoolgirl. 

"Careful. It smells blood, and it's angry." His voice had come from somewhere next to her, and with battle-honed reflexes, she turned her attention away from him to the monster dinosaur in front of her.

With the help of him and his impressive silver weapon, the dinosaur had fallen.

Later on, she would learn that his name was Seifer, and she joined him and his friend Raijin as the Disciplinary Committee in Balamb Garden.

Now…now what were they? After hours of thinking silently, she had decided that they were hardly anything more than mercenaries, perhaps even lower, serving under some crazy Sorceress.

The only reason she stayed here at all was because of him, because of Seifer.

She had loved him on sight, and it didn't matter if he didn't love her back. S long as she could stay with him, helping him, everything would be all right.

Dimly, Fujin realized that someone was saying her name. She tore her mind from the past memories into the harsh present, glaring at Raijin. "WHAT?"

She always spoke in something of a low shout, in sentences of no more than three words. It had been habit; she wasn't sure when she started it. She wasn't' sure of anything anymore. 

Raijin sighed exaggeratedly. "I _said_, what do you think, ya know?"

"ABOUT?"

"About what Wood here was saying." Raijin gestured to the soldier sitting next to him, a short brown-haired young man by the name of Mitchell Wood. 

Fujin remained silent. She had allowed her mind to drift, and she wasn't sure what Wood had been saying.

Raijin understood; he always did. "Wood was asking you about Seifer."

Fujin immediately straightened, switching her glare to the soldier. What had the outsider said about Seifer?

She knew that things had changed. When she first met him, Seifer had said that he had a long-time dream of becoming a knight. Fujin had vowed she would help him achieve his dream no matter what.

But everything had changed, turning upside-down. Seifer no longer followed his original dream. The Sorceress had manipulated him, bending his will to serve her, twisted his thoughts, and changed his point of view about his dream. Under her command, Seifer had done some terrible things.

But still Fujin followed him.

"WHAT?" She repeated to Wood.

"I said that things have gone too far. Seifer had the soldiers invade Fisherman's Horizon to search for that girl that the Sorceress wants to find. Pardon the cliché, but he has to be stopped." Wood stated.

Fujin started to leap up in Seifer's defense, to knock this stubborn soldier out for a week. But she had changed, and instead of killing him, she merely sighed inwardly, and spoke in a weary voice. "HOW?"

"You have to desert him." Wood spoke easily, as if those words were the most natural things in the world.

This time Fujin didn't hesitate. "NO. NOT OPTION." 

"Listen, Commander. The captain told me that you three were friends for years back at your military school. And that has to account for something. And Seifer values your friendship, even though he might not say so. By abandoning him, you would be telling him that what he is doing is _wrong_. Bring him to his senses, even though the three of you might not end up together." Wood continued.

But Fujin was barely listening. She would never—could never—desert him. They were a posse, they were friends. Her only friends. And Seifer had saved her life as well. She could never leave him.

She glanced sideways at Raijin, expecting support from her dark-skinned friend. But the talkative young man was now at a loss for words, staring down at his hands with a pained expression on his face.

From years of experience, she could tell that he agreed.

Wood's lips twitched; she could tell that he wanted to say more. But before any more words could come out of that foul mouth, Fujin stood up and left. 

As she walked down the hallway, she bit her lip angrily; to keep her mind focused, to keep her fury from unleashing. 

To keep herself from agreeing.


End file.
